Jack Richard is shown with prints of some of the portraits he’s created in a lifetime as an artist.

Photo: Kathleen Folkerth

CUYAHOGA FALLS — For more than 50 years, Jack Richard has maintained his artists’ studio, gallery and school in a three-story building on Front Street.

“We’re in our 52nd year,” he said, which makes his the oldest continually operating business in the Riverfront Square District with the exception of a bank.

Richard said he doesn’t like to give his age but loves sharing his lifetime of experiences with visitors to the gallery.

Soon he plans to have completed and on display a retrospective of his career that starts with his earliest work, in which he drew on the blank pages of his family’s encyclopedias in 1926 at the age of 3.

Richard, a Cuyahoga Falls resident, said he graduated from Buchtel High School in West Akron. He spent three years in the U.S. Army during World War II and was stationed in the Philippines and Japan.

“I didn’t like the Army and they didn’t like me,” he said.

But the experience did expose him to the art of Asia, which is well represented in his gallery.

He received his art training at the Chicago Professional School of Art, Kent State University, The University of Akron and Ohio University.

Much of his early career was in illustration. In his gallery, he features magazine covers and advertising work, including package design, he did over the years.